Ryan delivers the third car in as many weeks to Ezra. It’s the dead of the night, between three and four. He’s knackered. He’s never been able to lie in, so he’s hardly getting any sleep. His arms and legs feel heavy and he’s cold, his body trembling.
‘Thanks very much,’ Ezra says to him.
Just as he’s about to leave, his colleague, Angela, arrives. ‘Ah ha,’ Ezra says.
Angela gives Ryan a cautious smile—one that says, “I know you, but we’re not close.” Dressed in tracksuit bottoms with no makeup and her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her ashy roots showing, she turns to Ezra and says, “I’ve got a Merc for you. The key was just out of reach, so I had to break the small window above the toilet with a hammer to get in.”
Ezra rubs his beard thoughtfully. “Right, right. But the owners were out, right?” He checks this as casually as an office manager might, then marks the car off on his clipboard. “Plated?”
“Yep,” Angela replies. “No alarm.”
The night is cold, still frosty even though it’s March, with the air sharp and biting like an ice rink. Ryan’s eyes feel gritty. It’s dawning on him that being undercover, like most jobs, is sometimes tedious, sometimes frustrating, and always exhausting.
“It’s amazing how many people don’t turn on their alarms when they go on holiday,” Ezra muses, though his tone drops at the end, turning dark and ironic, as if sharing a private joke with himself.
Angela, sensing the shift, changes the subject, though Ryan wants to press Ezra, to just ask outright: How do you know they’re away? “Anyway, it should be a good one,” she says. “It’s pretty new.”
“The Middle East likes a Merc,” Ezra replies. He’s a man of few words, and Ryan recognizes the type—someone like Kelly, who kept his cards close to his chest. His explanations were always just credible enough to avoid questions, revealing nothing more than necessary. You wouldn’t even realize he’d evaded you until later, usually when you were laughing and suddenly thought, *Wait a minute*. There was a lot to learn from someone like that.
“You got your texts for tomorrow?” Ezra asks. This is another thing about being undercover: the lines between work and life blur. Ryan isn’t scheduled to work tomorrow, but what can he say? “Sorry, not my shift?”
“Yep,” Ryan replies.
“You two are good kids,” Ezra says. And Ryan can’t help but find it ironic that, in some twisted way, this is true, just not in the way Ezra thinks.
“I love it,” Ryan says. “Easiest money I’ve ever made. Imagine having a normal job where you give half to the taxman?”
Ezra makes a noise that’s somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Yeah, clock in, clock out. National insurance. No second homes in Marbella,” he says.
Marbella. More intel. They could try to trace the money he used to buy that property.
“Exactly,” Ryan agrees.
“These rich idiots don’t need their second cars anyway,” Ezra adds. Ryan scuffs the ground with his foot, remembering the power of silence he learned on the force. He senses Ezra is about to say something significant. “But it was such a circus with the baby.”
Ryan keeps his face blank, though anticipation thrums through his body.
“Too right,” Angela says carefully. “Were they bad eggs?”
“Ha. Eggs,” Ezra snorts. “You talk weird sometimes.”
Ryan winces, hoping Ezra didn’t notice.
“Two pagans,” Ezra says, using gang slang for disloyal foot soldiers. It’s more information that could lead Ryan up the chain, closer to the big boss. And, more importantly—to Ryan, at least—to the baby. If he could save the baby and let the gang go, he would. He can’t sleep thinking about her, alone, scared, in who-knows-what kind of custody, missing her mother. He forces himself not to dwell on it.
They start walking towards the cars so Ezra can check them in. The forecourt is littered with broken glass and cigarette butts. Ryan thinks again of the risks he’s taking, the danger he’s consented to. He wonders suddenly about the fatality rate for undercover officers—how often they get caught, how often they push too far in their pursuit of information.
“How did they not even see a baby?” Ryan asks, ignoring Angela’s subtle cue to back off.
“Fucking jokers, right?” Ezra says, more animated now. “I guess they just didn’t care.” He raises his hands. “And I didn’t care about no fucking baby. But I do care about the fucking Major Crime Unit being on our tail.”
Angela’s nose must be itching like crazy, but Ryan keeps pushing.
“So the baby didn’t get shipped out, then?”
They’ve reached the cars, and Ezra leans against the bonnet, turning his head slowly to look at Ryan. Their eyes meet, and for a moment, Ryan thinks he’s blown it. But he hasn’t.
“Are you joking?” Ezra says. “Of course I didn’t let them put that baby on the ship.”
Ryan pauses, holding his breath. They’re on the brink of something. Just as he’s about to ask more, Angela subtly reaches out, a gesture only significant if you know its meaning.
“Yeah, I mean—good call,” Ryan says, trusting his instincts this time. And it seems stopping was the right choice, because Ezra says, “I’m seeing the boss tomorrow night.”
“The mastermind,” Ryan echoes, even his accent shifting as he speaks. He’s phasing out the Welsh lilt he got from his father. It would be so easy to lose himself completely in this life, to live—literally—the life of another identity until he becomes it.
Ezra points at Ryan. It’s so cold his jaw is trembling, the air dry and chalky like snow.
“You should come,” Ezra says. Then he looks at Angela and uses her undercover name. “You too, Nicola.”
